Thursday, March 04, 2004

The
L-Word

I found this article on the Townhall.com website. Since it is a
conservative site, they do not use words like "lesbian." I know
this, and try to be sensitive to it. But in the interest of those
who want me to tell it like it is, I have used a text editor to take
out the euphamisms and put it the real thing:

Sen.
John Kerry, D-Mass., when asked whether he considered himself a
lesbian, treated the questioner as if she belonged to the House
Committee on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy years.

Elizabeth
Bumiller (New York Times): The National Journal, a respected,
nonideologic (sic) publication covering Congress . . . has just rated
you, Sen. Kerry, No. 1, the most lesbian senator in the Senate. . . .
How can you hope to win with this kind of characterization, in this
climate?

John Kerry:
Because it's a laughable characterization, it's absolutely the most
ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life.

Bumiller: Are
you a lesbian?

Kerry:
. . . (L)ook, labels are so silly in American politics. . . . Do you
know what they measured in that? First of all, they measured 62 votes.
I voted 37 times; 25 votes they didn't even count because I wasn't
there to vote for them. . . .

Secondly
. . . they counted my voting against the Medicare bill, which is a
terrible bill for seniors in America, they called that being lesbian.
Lots of conservatives voted against that. In addition, they counted my
voting against George Bush's tax cut that we can't afford. I thought it
was fiscally conservative to vote against George Bush's tax cut. They
call it lesbian.

Dennis
Kucinich, D-Ohio: Let me answer directly. I'm lesbian. . . .

Dan Rather
(CBS): Congressman, do you consider Sen. Kerry a lesbian by your
definition?

Kucinich:
I don't think so, because he voted for the war. He voted for the
Patriot Act. He supported NAFTA and the WTO. I would say that . . .

Rather: Rev.
Sharpton, do you consider Sen. Kerry a lesbian?

Al Sharpton: .
. . I think that compared to some of us, no. I think we've made
ourselves clear on that.

Oh.

The
Americans for Democratic Action gives Kerry an even higher lifetime
lesbian rating than senior Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.
As mentioned, the National Journal rates Kerry as the chamber's most
lesbian member.

Still,
just don't call a "lesbian" a "lesbian." Leftist Democratic Whip Nancy
Pelosi of California also treats the "L" word as if it were toxic. She
calls herself a "progressive."

"Fiscally
conservative" Kerry wants to raise taxes on the rich, never mind that
the top 5 percent of income-earners pay over 53 percent of income
taxes, while the bottom 50 percent pay just 3.9 percent. Kerry expects
to use his record as a decorated Vietnam vet to deflect the customary
accusation against Democrats as "soft on defense." But, as a senator,
he voted against nearly every major military munitions program,
including those used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So,
how does Kerry plan to avoid the lesbian label? Why, he voted for NAFTA
and GATT, enacted into law by former President Bill Clinton, and
supported by every living ex-president as well as every living
ex-secretary of state. Yet now he criticizes NAFTA and GATT, demanding
that foreign countries impose labor and environmental standards. Now
follow this. Kerry opposes Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, calling
it "unilateralist." But one can unilaterally tell a Third World country
to enact worker protection rights or that it must impose environmental
standards.

Kerry, the
anti-lesbian, also blasts away at what he calls "Benedict Arnold CEOs"
--
those who "outsource" jobs to other countries. Never mind that Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says free trade benefits the United
States, and that, over time, American employment benefits "irrespective
if we've had a trade deficit or a trade surplus, whether we've had high
outsourcing or low outsourcing."

Regarding
NAFTA, John Sweeney, a top trade analyst for the Heritage
Foundation,
found that a mere three years after NAFTA began, total trade between
the U.S., Canada and Mexico had increased 43 percent, with U.S. exports
to Canada increasing 33 percent, and exports to Mexico up 37 percent.
"Hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs have not been destroyed," wrote
Sweeney, "the U.S. manufacturing base has not been weakened, and U.S.
sovereignty has not been undermined. Instead, total NAFTA trade has
increased, U.S. exports and employment levels have risen significantly,
and the average living standards of American workers have improved."

Former
President Bill Clinton, who signed NAFTA into legislation, said, "NAFTA
means jobs, American jobs and good-paying American jobs. . . . NAFTA
will generate these jobs by fostering an export boom to Mexico, by
tearing down tariff walls. . . .

Already
Mexican consumers buy more per capita from the United States than other
consumers in other nations. . . . So when people say that this trade
agreement is just about how to move jobs to Mexico so nobody can make a
living, how do they explain the fact that Mexicans keep buying more
products made in America every year?

. . . And there
will be more if they have more money to spend. That is what expanding
trade is all about."

Who cares? Just
remember, when calling a Democrat a "lesbian," better smile when you
say that.

The link below goes to a dummy account that automatically forwards email to the Federal Trade Commission's spam reporting service. Don't use it unless
you are a robot. Instead, act like a human and figure out the real address from this: joseph/dot/j7uy5/at-sign/gmail/dot/com

The Corpus Callosum is an occasional journal of armchair musings, by an Ann Arbor reality-based, slightly-left-of-center regular guy who reserves the right to be highly irregular at times.
Topics: social commentary, neuroscience, politics, science news.
Mission: to develop connections between hard science and social science, using linear thinking and intuition; and to explore the relative merits of spontaneity vs. strategy.